In Search of an Alternative Feminist Cinema: Gender, Crisis, and the Cultural Discourse of Nation Building in Chinese Independent Films
Year: 2017
Type: article
Abstract: Chinese feminist cinema in the postsocialist era is shaped by the grand narrative of nation building that glamorizes urban professional career women and their contributions to economic marketization and globalization. Such cinematic overemphasis on urban women proves inadequate as it creates a disturbing silence about the diasporic existence of non-urban women. This uneven condition demands the creation of an alternative cinematic feminism that visualizes the diversity of Chinese women and represents the heterogeneity of feminist cinematic expressions and female experiences. Using Li Yu’s Lost in Beijing (2007, Pingguo 苹果) and Li Yang’s Blind Mountain (2007, Mang shan 盲山) as case studies, this essay investigates how Chinese independent films re-negotiate female gender identity and crisis through commercialized visual realism and social intervention while in reality the postsocialist grand narrative of nation building redefines the living conditions of female migrant workers and women of limited resources.
DOI: 10.16995/ane.152
Author: Jinhua Li
Institution: University of North Carolina at Asheville
Language: English
Topic: Cinema History and Criticism
Subfield: Visual Arts and Performing Arts
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W2604475804